Are You Leaving?
by Sevanadium
Summary: (Oneshot, third part of The Uninfected, check bio for more info) Lovino was the worst nurse in the hospital. He was also assigned as the assistant to doctor Alfred Jones, the doctor assigned to patient one. Though at the end of the day, Lovino isn't sure what's truth or what isn't.


Lovino was the shittiest nurse in the entire hospital. He truly was. There would be no understanding of whatever force had turned him around ten times and yelled at him to go, while pointing in the vague direction of a hospital. That was his superhero origin story. At least that was what he believed anyways.

He hated the white walls and the grey speckled floors. The rubber soled shoes that didn't make a noise on the floor annoyed him and his inability to smile and act nice annoyed others.

In other words, Lovino was a bastard.

The masses of people in the hall jostled him around and Lovino bit back the urge to growl at each and every one of them and leave them with a few choice words that might get them to leave the hospital and go to a mental one. But he didn't, and instead carefully put on foot in front of the other.

The white walls and floors swam around him and he had to focus on the hallway in front of him to keep himself from turning around and hightailing it out of there. Right, left, left, right, left. He knew the directions to The Room better than he knew the way to his own bathroom in the pitch dark.

"Good morning Lovi!" The doctor whom he was the assistant to said. He wore glasses that made his wide and innocent eyes seem even bigger than they were.

They had worked together for nearly half a year now. Alfred Jones was the youngest doctor on The Team. At seventeen years old he had graduated with honours from his university. Lovino wasn't so lucky, he hadn't been smart enough to study medicine, but he had managed to get into nursing school.

The disgust-tinged memories took what had originally meant to be a neutral expression and turned it into one of distaste. "Hello Dr. Jones," he said between his teeth.

"You've known me for months, dude. I mean we've even had dinner together. I'm sure that you can handle calling me Alfred without risking an aneurysm." Alfred bent down onto his haunches to look through one of the lower draws of a filing cabinet.

Lovino crossed his arms over his chest. "I am not doing that." He swallowed. "Have you even figured out what's going on with The Patient?"

Alfred held up a manilla folder. The words 'Patient Zero' stamped on it in friendly letters. "I haven't figured out anything. The government sure had their fun with him. I wonder what they were trying to achieve."

He snatched the file out of Alfred's hands and scanned the pages. Nothing he hadn't seen before. All of it was the same information. They hadn't found anything new about the patient in weeks. The last thing they had found was that he was partial to desserts over proper food.

Lovino hated how his mind automatically capitalised things. The Patient, The Room, The Project. He couldn't help it. Even if he did not make it into medical school to gain a proper degree, he was smart when it came to things that didn't originate from a textbook And he knew that those things were important enough to garner capital letters.

Even if he hated people he could read them like an textbook. Every movement of Alfred's spoke a million words to him. The subtle glances, the mirroring of his own body language, the times he opened his mouth to say something, only to close it seconds later. Alfred liked him more than just platonically.

He didn't know how he felt about that.

"I'm taking his food to him," Lovino said. He tossed the file onto Alfred's cluttered desk and walked away.

"Wait!" Alfred yelled and Lovino stopped in his tracks.

He turned around slowly and gave what he deemed his best glare at Alfred. "What do you want now?" he asked.

"I was wondering, if uh—" Alfred trailed off and took his glasses off and wiped the lenses on his shirt. He shuffled in place, shifting from one foot to the other as he did so.

"Just spit it out. I don't have all day to wait." Lovino knew that Alfred would ask him to do something outside of work. Alfred only acted this nervous when he was dealing with things that were not related to his work.

"I was wondering if you'd like to go out with me to dinner. It won't be anything fancy I don't think, but there's an okay steakhouse a short drive from the hospital and I could take you home to get ready before we go and—" he took a deep breath in— "I really hope you'll come because I sorta like you, just a little bit." He made eye contact with Lovino and smiled broadly. "So whaddya say?"

Lovino was heartless at times. He looked and Alfred and furrowed his brows in concentration as if thinking about whether or not he would actually do it. After he checked his watch for the time, he finally spoke. "I'll be able to make it. But no suits or anything, we'll go straight after work. It's just a dinner between two friends."

Alfred looked crestfallen. "Friends, right. We'll meet by the Humping Noodle after our shifts end. Are you okay with that?"

The Humping Noodle was the name Alfred had graciously given to the fountain that was situated in the gardens near the rehab. In Alfred's defense, it did look like the two ceramic rods were doing less than innocent things.

"You're an idiot. We work together, there's no need for us to meet anywhere." Lovino shook his head and walked out. He attempted to stomp and try and pull some noise from the silent shoes but got nothing.

To be frank, Lovino wasn't actually a proper nurse. Sure he had all the training, but with his appalling bedside manner he was not allowed near a single patient. Instead he worked with Alfred and looked after Patient Zero. Lovino had never seen Patient Zero, but he knew that he was a male and that he was small, most likely a kid since didn't need as much medication as Patient One.

Lovino wasn't assigned to Patient One, but from what he'd heard, Patient One was more than a handful. Often, he would hear cursing as his nurse didn't comply to his demands of letting him out so that he could see Patient Zero. He felt pretty damn glad that he wasn't assigned to him.

Even if Lovino didn't understand why they were there in the first place. He knew that Alfred didn't know either as he had asked Lovino the same question before and Lovino had been unable to answer it.

He took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. At least today wasn't Test Day. A day where Lovino was forced to prepare various types of medication while Alfred went into the small room and injected Patient Zero.

It didn't take long for him to return with a tray full of hospital food that Lovino would not lay a hand on even if it was the only thing between him and death. Scratch that, he would gladly turn it down if it was the only thing between him and death. He could never quite understand how people could resort to becoming savages when hungry, it was just a matter of will power.

Lovino had excellent willpower. He had been able to withstand Alfred's advances thus far and he concluded that the blond would stop pestering him within a few months. He just needed to spend some time with Alfred and get him used to the idea that they were just friends.

Who was he kidding? He returned Alfred's feelings, he also felt that stutter in his heartbeat when the man smiled at him and he often stopped himself from seeking eye contact with him. Lovino hated how he could read himself like an open book sometimes.

He huffed as soon as he entered Alfred's office. The smell of Alfred's deodorant punched his nose and left him with a headache which would linger for the rest of the day.

"Can you stop spraying Axe like it's bug spray because the only bug around here is you." Lovino glared at Alfred and felt the poison drain out of him when he saw the hurt look on Alfred's face.

"You know that you don't have to insult me. You could have just told me not to spray it." Alfred pursed his lips and crossed his arms over his chest.

Lovino put the plate onto Alfred's desk. "You can give it to him whenever. I put the medication to calm him down into the potatoes."

Alfred's eyes narrowed. "You didn't answer, my question, you know that?"

"Would you like me to check you into the psych ward? You did not ask me a question," Lovino said.

"Well now I did." Alfred dragged the tray towards him and inspected it. He paid particular attention to the potatoes, that had a yellow tint to them from the medication. But that had been hidden under a dollop of margarine that melted slowly and stained the rest of them.

"Ask me what?" Lovino turned his head slightly away from Alfred. His office was small, barely large enough to fit four people in without someone's hand accidentally finding a butt or a crotch or even worse, Alfred's packed lunch.

"About why you have to be so rude sometimes. It's not necessary ya know." Alfred turned his attention to Lovino.

A smirk drew itself onto Lovino's face. "It's a defense mechanism ya know," he mocked Alfred. "I don't want people to get near me. I'm completely unaware of it and couldn't change it if I wanted to."

"You're lying. You know just as well as I do that you can act different. Look at how you treat Amelia in the maternity ward."

"She may be as annoying as you but I have yet to see her deliberately be like that towards me." Lovino shifted his weight from foot to foot. Subtly enough to not let Alfred notice it, but still enough to help get rid of the incessant urge to fidget that was bogging him down.

"I can't understand you. You're always giving me mixed signals, one moment you're being rude and treating me like I just snuck in front of you while driving and then slowed to a snail's pace and then other times… other times you treat me almost like a friend. I don't understand it at all," Alfred said, his eyes shifted frantically throughout the room like a fly buzzing around, looking for any place to land except for Lovino.

"Well then. I'll just keep you guessing, won't I? I'm going to the staff room, your paperwork has been piling up and if I don't sort it out it won't get any smaller." Lovino's lips lifted in the one corner and caused his nose to partially crinkle in disgust.

"Thank's Lovi, you're the best!" Alfred shouted.

"Inside voice Alfred or do I have to give you yet another lecture on how I can hear you when you shout at me," Lovino said.

The rest of the work day passed as swiftly as it could with Alfred pestering him every five minutes and soon enough, Lovino found himself standing in front of Alfred's maroon Jeep. Of course the man would own something as environmentally destructive as a diesel guzzling Jeep.

"It's a bit high, you sure you don't need a hand up?" Alfred asked as he opened the door for Lovino. Lovino felt like snapping the man's head off but during the day he did let slip that he would pay. It was only for the free food that he kept his mouth mostly shut and got into the car. Without any struggle, mind you.

"I'm alright, thank you very much. Why don't you get going now, princess?" He couldn't keep all of the venom out of his voice. He wasn't himself without it.

"You know how I feel about that nickname." Alfred started the car and inched out of the parking lot of Hetalia Hospital. It was one of the largest hospitals in their area, and despite the late hour, there were still more cars that Lovino cared to pay attention to, endlessly pulling in and out of parking spaces and circling around the parking lot like sharks as they looked for an open parking.

"Why do you think I use it? I only use it it because it annoys you more than any other nickname I could find." Lovino didn't have his safety belt on, he didn't really care for the effort that was involved in putting it on.

It didn't take them long to reach the steakhouse that Alfred mentioned earlier that day. Lovino was glad of that since his stomach threatened to bore a hole through his abdomen if he didn't eat something soon.

For now he would have to settle for drinks. He had wine while Alfred, who was seventeen at the time (a definite prodigy, finished school and university by the time Lovino had honed his flirting skills with women), was unable to order alcohol and instead got a Coke. He stirred the ice cubes in his glass with the straw.

"So, uh… what's going on in your life?" Alfred asked. He felt uncomfortable since they rarely interacted outside of work. Lovino barely knew anything about Lovino that was not related to him being a doctor and their goal of looking after Patient Zero.

"Not much. My entire life is devoted to that damn room," Lovino growled over the rim of his glass. He took a small sip, he didn't want to finish it within minutes and then feel forced into getting another glass, and then another, and another. While he was not afraid of getting slightly tipsy, he was afraid of the sorts of things he would admit once he finished his third or even fourth glass.

"I know. It's really weird though, on Test Days I inject enough methotrexate to kill even Ivan but it doesn't stop the growth of his cells," Alfred said. His eyes drifted down the menu until they locked onto what he had been looking for.

Lovino did not know that about Patient Zero. "What do you mean cell growth?" He tried to voice his question in such a way that made it seem like he would not accept Alfred ignoring it.

"I think they were experimenting with a cure for cancer or something. I'm not really supposed to tell you anything, but it seems like he's unkillable."

"You're making up stories." Lovino snorted. "There's no way that he can't be killed, maybe a resistance to medications or an good metabolism."

"That's the thing. They told me to experiment with… physical injuries and while some didn't heal immediately, the more threatening ones like a broken arm seemed to heal within hours," Alfred said.

Their waitress came with a fake smile and even faker breasts, and put their plates on the table. "Here's your food," she said. The makeup on her face looked more akin to a clown than anything and Lovino made a point of avoiding eye contact with her. While he did consider himself a (gay) ladies man, he did not want to use his charm on that monstrosity.

"Thank you ma'am," Alfred said with a smile. Within moments she was gone and Alfred was left with his burger and Lovino with his steak. It was a steakhouse after all. But they better have not messed it up by overcooking it. They were in England, the land of the terrible food, as he liked to call it.

"You're not making sense," Lovino said after taking a bite of steak. "You said that Patient Zero's recovery is normal with smaller injuries but not with larger ones."

"Yep," Alfred said through a large bite of burger. Lovino glared and watched in amusement as Alfred hurriedly covered his mouth. "It doesn't make sense, but nothing does with that kid."

"What else is there about him?" Lovino asked. He looked down at his plate and focused on cutting his steak into bite-sized pieces before placing them in his mouth.

Alfred took a few moments to answer. "That's the thing, there's so much that's inhuman about him. I wish I could tell you more, I would love to. But you know that I'm on a different security clearance level to you."

Lovino took a sip of wine. It was refreshing after the rich taste of the meat. "Because I'm going to tell people about what you've told me. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm also in the same position as you." Albeit with a lower security clearance level.

The rest of their meal passed in polite awkwardness. When the waitress came with their bill, Lovino insisted on him at least paying for their drinks and Alfred insisted on giving the waitress a much larger tip than was necessary. In Lovino's opinion, the waitress didn't deserve a tip at all. When she had come to ask if their meal was okay it had been just as Lovino put a rather large mouthful of steak into his mouth and he had to chew and swallow quickly while she stared him down.

They reached Lovino's apartment. It was dingy, but at least he got to stay with his brother while he completed his schooling. In fact, Feliciano should have been in the same grade as Alfred, if Alfred had been normal and attended high school like most teenagers.

"Thank you," Lovino blurted out. His face was red. Saying 'thank you' was something that he was not used to doing, but he knew that he would have to do it if he wanted to be in a relationship with Alfred at any point in the future. The kid put too much weight on such minuscule things.

"You're welcome." Alfred let the window roll up and started his car.

Lovino was left on the pavement as he waited for Alfred to pull away.

The window opened again. "You're not who I thought you were. I thought you were a different person to who you are, but it seems I'm wrong, I'll see you at work next week," Alfred said and pulled away.

Lovino was left alone on the pavement with the cold sting of rejection lapping over him. He could read people like a book, as he had told himself many times before, so why couldn't he predict the impending rejection that had just come from Alfred? Whatever he had meant by that?

Over the course of the next day, Lovino felt the insatiable curiosity of who was behind the door gnawing at him. While he felt affected by what Alfred had said the previous day before he drove away, there was something about the six month long question that told his romantic life to piss off.

Alfred had said it, he was not going to tell Lovino anything else about The Project. That meant that Lovino would have to find it all out for himself. The definiteness in Alfred's tone when he said those words had been the final straw and had set Lovino's resolve in stone.

That stone hard resolve was what led to him walking into the hospital on his off day, at a far too late hour for him to be coming in for his usual shift. He usually left for home at five in the evening. It was nearing eight.

The hospital seemed eerie, with it's flickering lights and too-bright walls. Lovino's dress shoes clicked against the floor. How he longed to drag the corner of his sole along it and watch gleefully as he scuffed the floor.

He couldn't do that, he was on a mission. He needed to get to Patient Zero's room where he would open it up and finally see what was going on. Amelia from the maternity ward passed him and Lovino gave a somewhat pleasant smile to her and continued onwards.

The twisting maze came to an end far sooner than it normally did and Lovino found himself standing in front of Patient Zero's door. He didn't know what else he was supposed to do so he found himself sitting down on the floor and leaning against the wall. The doors weren't soundproof, he knew that from hearing Patient One yell insults in a harsh language Lovino paid little attention to.

"Hello," he said to the door. With his luck Patient Zero was probably asleep. He didn't even know if natural sunlight made it into the room. The other room seemed dark and when he twisted to look at the crack between the door and the floor, it seemed like any and all light was sucked in like a black hole.

"H-hello," a young voice replied. The boy breathed heavily and Lovino didn't know how to help him.

"I'm Lovino Vargas." Lovino waited for a reply from the boy and got none. "Don't you have a name?" he asked.

"I don't know. Alfred has never told me what my name is. He only calls me Patient Zero, but I don't understand what that means." The boy's voice wavered with fear. "Why are you here sir?"

Lovino had to think before he replied. "I don't know." Was all that he came up with.

"Oh."

"How old are you?" Lovino asked. It had been something he had been wondering for a while. If the boy even knew his age, he didn't even know his own name.

"I'm eight!" the boy said in the excited way that any child would exclaim their name. "Alfred told me a little while back, he even let me have some cake. It was really yummy."

"He did? Alfred's a good kid, isn't he? I don't think he wants to do what he's doing."

"What do you mean, mister?" the boy asked.

"Nothing," Lovino replied. That did explain the chocolate cake he had been told to fetch from a local café for Alfred.

"Um…"

"Yes?" Lovino was pressed up close against the door and was able to hear every single movement that the boy made.

"Will I ever see my brother again?"

He asked the question so innocently. But it sounded as if all hope had been removed from his voice and left to dry in the sun for a few weeks. Lovino gulped, he didn't what he would do if he had been removed from his brother.

It was only logical that Patient Zero and Patient One were brothers. The way Patient One screamed to be let out and how they had been brought in at the same time. It made Lovino sick. Like Alfred he did not want to be here, he had merely been in the wrong place at the wrong time and now he paid for it by letting things that no man should have on his conscience be done.

Lovino's neutral expression turned stern and he faced the door full on. "I'll make sure of it," he said with an steadfast voice.

"Thank you."

It felt like their conversation was over. Lovino sat by the door for a while more before getting up and walking towards Alfred's office. He could give two shits about the cameras in them he had a plan and he was going to get it done. Even if he had put less than five minutes of thought into it.

He snatched the keys off of the key hook and walked quickly to the door that held patient one. It took him three tries to get the right key.

"I'm getting you out of here," he whispered to the boy, "Be quiet and stick by me or else."

He let the door swing open and saw Patient One, the boy. He was small, smaller than any eight-year-old should have been and he had too-long blond hair falling into his eyes. Pity dropped itself over Lovino like a bucket of ice water.

His hand went out and grabbed the boy's own. Lovino decided to ignore the flinch that he saw when they made contact, and instead focused on closing the door and grabbing the keys.

They walked in silence to Patient One's room, which wasn't all that far from the boy's. Lovino's hand shook as he tried key after key in the slot. The last key on the keychain fell in and turned itself with a loud click in the quiet hallway.

"I'm getting you out of here. Don't speak, I don't want them to hear us," Lovino said to the dark room.

"Huh?" The voice asked. It was scratchy and hoarse from the yelling he did on a regular basis.

"I'm helping you two escape." Lovino's eyes jerked around the hallway. Any moment there should be people coming to get him and tell him to move away from the government property. His eyes narrowed. People should never be called property.

Seven, nearly eight years had passed since that night and once again, Lovino found himself waking up in the same bed as Arthur Kirkland. Pre-dawn light illuminated the room and emerald eyes seemed to glow in the dark as Arthur looked down at him.

"What's wrong?" Arthur asked, a look of concern on his face.

"What do you mean?" Lovino grumbled, his voice sounded like molasses and his every limb seemed to ache.

"I think you were having a nightmare, you were tossing and turning and mumbling things in your sleep." Arthur let himself down and lay next to Lovino.

Lovino thought for a moment. "I don't remember having a nightmare. I think it was a dream about something that happened before the apocalypse started."

"Oh, tell me about it."

"I was eighteen and had been working at the hospital for about six months. I've told you all about that terrible place and the things they did there. It's something I don't feel like talking about," Lovino explained and rolled over. He took a pillow and hugged it tightly against his chest.

"That didn't happen.," Arthur said after a long silence.

"Of course it did! I remember Alfred with his stupid Jeep and the pills I had to sort out every morning and the yelling and screaming of Patient One." Lovino held the pillow even tighter and he was sure that if he tightened his grip any further, the lining would break and feathers would be let loose around their bedroom.

"I'm not saying that it didn't happen," Arthur said slowly. "I'm saying that it didn't happen to you."

Lovino turned to face Arthur, his eyebrows crinkled in confusion and he pursed his lips, trying to see a flaw in what had happened to him. Despite what he said, Lovino trusted Arthur and if he was concerned then Lovino would be concerned as well. He knew that they wouldn't have lasted more than a week together if they didn't trust each other.

Especially in the zombie apocalypse.

"Do you know Alfred?" Lovino asked.

Arthur nodded. "He was very loud spoken and annoying, a year younger than me but decades more successful. We nearly had a bit of a romance but he turned me down."

"He told me that I'm not the person he thought I was or something stupid like that," Lovino said. Even now his heart twinged at the thought of Alfred.

"But he didn't say that," Arthur demanded.

"What did he say then? Let us stay together forever and ever, because he's not here right now," Lovino growled out. He had never been a morning person, no matter how much tried to quell his inner snark it did not seem to work.

"He just said goodbye and drove off and the next time I saw him it was as if he never flirted with me or asked me out to dinner, I couldn't tell too well. The last time I saw him he was panicking over Ludwig and Gilbert being set free."

"Ludwig and Gilbert?" Lovino asked. The names were unfamiliar to him.

"Patient One and Patient Zero. They had been let loose during the night, I never saw him after that," Arthur said.

The silence between them was long and drawn out. Lovino waged an internal war over whether or not he wanted to tell Arthur, but eventually the side that did not want to say it lost.

"I let them go. I remember it as clear as day," Lovino admitted.

"But how? We can't have worked the same job. You told me you worked as a waiter in a café down the road, the same one that I once visited to get a cake for Ludwig when he turned eight."

The two sets of memories clashed within Lovino's head. On one hand, he could clearly remember going into the café and ordering a chocolate cake slice for Patient Zero, but on the other he also remembered a grumpy looking fellow with too-large eyebrows that only now received the name 'Arthur' when his mind conjured the image.

"It doesn't make sense," he said eventually. Lovino's hand balled into a fist. The slight headache he had woken up with hammered against his skull. He opened his eyes to see Arthur looking at him, the concerned look still present on his face as if it had been etched there with a jumbo Sharpie.

"Is there anything that does?" Arthur asked. He lay on his back now, staring at the ceiling.

Lovino considered what Arthur said. Nothing made logical sense anymore, their only option was to live from day to day.

"Where are they?" Lovino asked abruptly.

"I don't know. If they're still alive, they've probably left the city by now," Arthur said.

"What if they haven't?"

"We would have seen them by now. We've been here for more than five years."

Lovino worried the corner of his pillow between his fingers. "How long was it until we saw each other, or are you forgetting how we spent five years alone."

"Of course I'm not, but I'm sure that we would have seen some sort of sign that they were still here. I'm telling you that they're dead, it may have even happened before everything." Arthur sat up and the blankets pooled around his waist.

Something did not sit well within Lovino, the idea of them being dead just did not make any sense. While Patient Zero would be thirteen and Patient One would not be much older than that, he could see the determination to live in their eyes when he set them free from the hospital.

"I don't think so," he said slowly.


End file.
